Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I took my boss's offer of Friday morning off from work (to go with Wednesday and Thursday), rather than just going to work for three hours in the morning, in part so I could sleep in if it seemed appropriate.

Instead, I woke bright and early, and headed out to the gym. I had a theory that morning workouts go better for me than afternoon or after-work ones. I didn't actually do more exercises than in other recent sessions, but I think I enjoyed myself more, and I enjoyed not feeling pressed for time. [The plan was to go to the gym regardless of when I woke, and if necessary, shuffle things later in the day.] Insufficient data, and that's unlikely to change as long as I'm working regular hours. After I worked out, I called my mother, went to Chinatown for a quick lunch, and then up to my aunt Lea's house, where I discovered I had misunderstood discussions of scheduling, and my mother, my aunt, my aunt's mother-in-law Caroline, and Caroline's paid carer Cindy were about to sit down to a home-cooked lunch. I thought at first that all I had room for was tea, but then figured that some rice would be nice, and one thing led to another, and there was plenty of food, so I had two servings of the Chinese omelets (filled with cooked mushrooms and bits of sauteed meat) and some of the mixed vegetables. Unfortunately, Cindy didn't have enough English to tell me the name of the vegetable, so while I think I tried a new vegetable, I don't know which one. The English name probably includes "melon," it had pale green flesh, and was not at all bitter. Maybe winter melon. I thanked Cindy, afterwards, for cooking me something I'd never eaten before.

Then Mom, Lea, and I went around the corner to the senior center where my aunt attends a weekly Shakespeare class. The teacher's background seems to be primarily in theatre rather than literature, as an actor and acting teacher, and he knows quite a bit about Shakespeare. He's leading the class through Hamlet line-by-line, with comments where he thinks he can give useful background or a word needs glossing. We did about two scenes worth of Act III in about an hour, starting with the Player King coming in so Hamlet can give him instruction. (I managed not to say "love, blood, and rhetoric" aloud.) The teacher took the opportunity to talk about Shakespeare's relationship with Will Kemp, the chief clown in the company--he said that the complaints about clowns who speak more than is written in the script comes from a specific rivalry between them. The teacher also made sure we knew where the dirty jokes were. I've been to worse English classes, certainly, but don't feel a great need to go back; this may be partly my style, and partly that I did walk in in the middle. My aunt has been going to these classes for years, and enjoys them a lot.

After the class, we went back to my aunt's, and my aunt and I went and bought groceries while Mom napped briefly. We got back, Mom woke, and mostly Mom and I, and sometimes Mom, Lea, and I, talked about stuff, including some financial stuff. Caroline also napped a while, and woke up around the time I made myself some more tea; Cindy made her some, and served her some blueberry cheesecake. There turned out to be enough for everyone, and it was excellent, homemade by Caroline's granddaughter Karina (my cousin by marriage).

When I was ready to come home for dinner, Mom walked me down to the L train. Along the way, she said something like "what the three of you--four of you? have seems to be working" and I said yes, and then she asked what I was smiling about. I hadn't noticed, but thinking of my loves will do that, so I said that I was smiling about how wonderful they were and how lucky I was to have found them, and either I misspoke and only mentioned cattitude and adrian_turtle or she misheard, because she said "and [Q]?" and I said yes.

Mom then asked me how long Q and I have been involved, and how soon Q's partner had known. I said "As soon as Q and I knew we wanted this, which is also how long Cattitude has known." It seemed like the right question, or one of the right questions, whether in terms of liking them and wanting to be sure I'm treating them right, or of wanting to be sure that I'm not in for an unpleasant surprise at some point in the future.

I came home, Cattitude and I hung out a bit, and eventually sent for lamb rogan josh and aloo paratha, since I wasn't up to cooking and Cattitude hadn't bought stuff that would go into recipes he's experienced with. There was enough of the lamb that I had some for breakfast this morning. I also did some paid proofreading on the subway downtown, but there are a couple of points I need to check on before I fax it back (which I should do tomorrow), one of which is currently tagged by an exclamation point in the margin, and that I may yet punt--they're paying for proofreading, not a serious copyedit and fact check.

( your usual cut-tagged gym notes )

On the strong recommendation of xiphias and cheshyre, I bought tickets for myself and cattitude for the Actors' Shakespeare Company production of King Lear, transferred from Boston to La Mama E.T.C. It's a theatre-in-the-round (well, rectangle) production, and takes the approach to Shakespeare that I tend to like, namely very minimal scenery. I do wish the actors, particularly those playing Lear and Cordelia, had enunciated better.

The company used the space well: not only were entrances and exits frequently up and down stairs, but some of the action was on the stairs between the seats. In particular, at the beginning, when Edmund is told to step back, he simply sat down on the stair, about six feet from us. By the time everyone else had exited and he spoke, I'd forgotten he was there.

I not only hadn't seen Lear live before [1], but if I ever saw a filmed production, it was a long time ago, and I didn't remember details. More precisely, the details I remembered were the lines everyone quotes, not turns of the plot.

The emotional shape of the play is odd; the first half is a lot closer to comedy than Macbeth or Hamlet. It's not just that the Fool, as Cattitude pointed out, has the best lines, it's that everyone has comic lines. Then there's a storm, and everyone and everything turns a lot darker. By the end, I was thinking "if he [Edmund] survives the battle, we're in trouble." He does, of course.

A good production, if not quite as good as my Boston reviewers led me to expect, but I don't know if that was me or the play; transfers are always potentially iffy, and 3.5 hours is a long time to sit in a metal folding chair even with a fifteen-minute intermission during which I found space to do most of my shoulder and heel stretches.

I think I want to track down a good filmed Lear and put it in our Netflix queue, for a few weeks from now. Good defined for these purposes as minimal cuts, good acting, and clear speech. Period/costuming aren't important, and while I know there's no film equivalent of a bare stage, the focus should be on the language, not the landscape or the storm effects. Recommendations, please.

[1] Lots of Hamlets, multiple Macbeths, Tempests, and A Midsummer Night's Dreams, some very good variations on Romeo and Juliet, from West Side Story to Shakespeare's R and J, a four-man production set in a boys' boarding school, an assortment of histories and comedies, even Cymbeline, courtesy of the completists at the Public Theatre. Some of that is fashion: The Tempest was very popular about ten years ago. And some is probably chance.